dissenting minority at once claimed to be the Free Church. They. met outside the Free Assembly Hall on the 31st of October, and, failing to gain admission to it, withdrew to another hall, where they elected Mr Colin Bannatyne their moderator and held the remaining sittings of the Assembly. It was reported that between 16,000 and 17,000 names had been received of persons adhering to the anti-unionist principle. At the Assembly of 1901 it was stated that the Free Church had twenty-five ministers and at least sixty-three congregations. The character of the church is indicated by the fact that its office-bearers were the faithful survivors of the decreasing minority of the Old Free Church, which had protested against the disestablishment resolutions, against the relaxation of subscription, against toleration of the teaching of the Glasgow professors, and against the use in worship of organs or of human hymns. Her congregations were mostly in the Gaelic-speaking districts of Scotland. She was confronted with a very arduous undertaking; her congregations grew in number, but were far from each other and there were not nearly enough ministers. The Highlands were filled, by the Union, with exasperation and dispeace which could not soon subside. The church met with no sympathy or assistance at the hands of the United Free Church, and her work was conducted at first under considerable hardships, nor was her position one to appeal to the general popular sentiment of Scotland. But the little church continued her course with indomitable courage and without any compromise of principle. The Declaratory Act of 1892 was repealed after a consultation of presbyteries, and the old principles as to worship were declared. A professor was obliged to withdraw a book he had written, in which the results of criticism, with regard to the Synoptic Gospels, had been accepted and applied. The desire of the Church of Scotland to obtain relaxation of her formula was declared to make union with her impossible. Along with this unbending attitude, signs of material growth were not wanting. The revenue of the church increased; the grant from the sustentation fund was in 1901 only £75, but from 1903 onwards it was £167.

The decision of the House of Lords in 1904 did not bring the trials of the Free Church to an end. In the absence of any arrangement with the United Free Church, she could only gain possession of the property declared to belong to her by an application in each particular case to the Court of Session, and a series of law-suits began which were trying to all parties. In the year 1905 the Free Church Assembly met in the historic Free Church Assembly Hall, but it did not meet there again. Having been left by the awards of the commission without any station in the foreign mission field, the Free Church resolved to start a foreign mission of her own. The urgent task confronting the church was that of supplying ordinances to her congregations. The latter numbered 200 in 1907, and the church had as yet only 74 ordained ministers, so that many of the manses allocated to her by the commissioners were not yet occupied, and catechists and elders were called to conduct services where possible. The gallant stand this little church had made for principles which were no longer represented by any Presbyterian church outside the establishment attracted to her much interest and many hopes that she might be successful in her endeavours to do something for the religious life of Scotland.

See SCOTLAND, CHURCH OF, for bibliography and statistics. (A.M.*) FREEDMEN'S BUREAU (officially the BUREAU Of Freedmen, REFUGEES AND ABANDONED LANDS), a bureau created in the United States war department by an act of Congress, 3rd of March 1865, to last one year, but continued until 1872 by later acts passed over the president's veto. Its establishment was due partly to the fear entertained by the North that the Southerners if left to deal with the blacks would attempt to re-establish some form of slavery, partly to the necessity for extending relief to needy negroes and whites in the lately conquered South, and partly to the need of creating some commission or bureau to take charge of lands confiscated in the South. During the Civil War a million negroes fell into the hands of the Federals and had to be cared for. Able-bodied blacks were enlisted in the army, and the women, children and old men were settled in large

camps on confiscated Southern property, where they were cared for alternately by the war department and by the treasury department until the organization of the Freedmen's Bureau. At the head of the bureau was a commissioner, General O. O. Howard, and under him in each Southern state was an assistant commissioner with a corps of local superintendents, agents and inspectors. The officials had the broadest possible authority in all matters that concerned the blacks. The work of the bureau may be classified as follows: (1) distributing rations and medical supplies among the blacks; (2) establishing schools for them and aiding benevolent societies to establish schools and churches; | (3) regulating labour and contracts; (4) taking charge of confiscated lands; and (5) administering justice in cases in which blacks were concerned. For several years the ex-slaves were under the almost absolute control of the bureau. Whether this control had a good or bad effect is still disputed, the Southern whites and many Northerners holding that the results of the bureau's work were distinctly bad, while others hold that much good resulted from its work. There is now no doubt, however, that while most of the higher officials of the bureau were good men, the subordinate agents were generally without character or judgment and that their interference between the races caused permanent discord. Much necessary relief work was done, but demoralization was also caused by it, and later the institution was used by its officials as a means of securing negro votes. In educating the blacks the bureau made some progress, but the instruction imparted by the missionary teachers resulted in giving the ex-slaves notions of liberty and racial equality that led to much trouble, finally resulting in the hostility of the whites to negro education. The secession of the blacks from the white churches was aided and encouraged by the bureau. The whole field of labour and contracts was covered by minute regulations, which, good in theory, were absurd in practice, and which failed altogether, but not until labour had been disorganized for several years. The administration of justice by the bureau agents amounted simply to a ceaseless persecution of the whites who had dealings with the blacks, and bloody conflicts sometimes resulted The law creating the bureau provided for the division of the confiscated property among the negroes, and though carried out only in parts of South Carolina, Florida and Georgia, it caused the negroes to believe that they were to be cared for at the expense of their former masters. This belief made them subject to swindling schemes perpetrated by certain bureau agents and others who promised to secure lands for them. When negro suffrage was imposed by Congress upon the Southern States, the bureau aided the Union League (q.v.) in organizing the blacks into a political party opposed to the whites. A large majority of the bureau officials secured office through their control of the blacks. The failure of the bureau system and its discontinuance in the midst of reconstruction without harm to the blacks, and the intense hostility of the Southern whites to the institution caused by the irritating conduct of bureau officials, are indications that the institution was not well conceived nor wisely administered. See P. S. Pierce, The Freedmen's Bureau (lowa City, 1904); Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction (Washington, 1866); W. L. Fleming (ed.), Documents relating to Reconstruction (Cleveland, O., 1906); W. L. Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama (New York, 1905); and James W. Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi (New York, 1901). (W. L, F.)

|

FREEHOLD, a town and the county-seat of Monmouth county, New Jersey, U.S.A., in the township of Freehold, about 25 m. E. by N. of Trenton. Pop. (1890) 2932; (1900) 2934, of whom 215 were foreign-born and 126 were negroes; (1905) 3064; (1910) 3233. Freehold is served by the Pennsylvania and the Central of New Jersey railways. It is the trade centre of one of the most productive agricultural districts of the state and has various manufactures, including carriages, carpets and rugs, files, shirts, underwear, and canned beans and peas. The town is the seat of two boarding schools for boys: the Freehold Military School and the New Jersey Military Academy (chartered, 1900; founded in 1844 as the Freehold Institute). One of the residences in the town dates from 1755. A settlement was made in the township about 1650, and the township was incorporated

of the order of the Saviour by the king of Greece, and also received an order from the prince of Montenegro.

Freeman advanced the study of history in England in two special directions, by insistence on the unity of history, and by teaching the importance and right use of original authorities. History is not, he urges, to be divided "by a middle wall of partition" into ancient and modern, nor broken into fragments as though the history of each nation stood apart. It is more than a collection of narratives; it is a science, "the science of man in his political character." The historical student, then, cannot afford to be indifferent to any part of the record of man's political being; but as his abilities for study are limited, he will, while reckoning all history to be within his range, have his own special range within which he will master every detail (Rede Lecture). Freeman's range included Greek, Roman and the earlier part of English history, together with some portions of foreign medieval history, and he had a scholarly though general knowledge of the rest of the history of the European world. He regarded the abiding life of Rome as "the central truth of European history," the bond of its unity, and he undertook his History of Sicily (1891-1894) partly because it illustrated this unity. Further, he urges that all historical study is valueless which does not take in a knowledge of original authorities, and he teaches both by example and precept what authorities should be thus described, and how they are to be weighed and used. He did not use manuscript authorities, and for most of his work he had no need to do so. The authorities which he needed were already in print, and his books would not have been better if he had disinterred a few more facts from unprinted sources. His reputation as a historian will chiefly rest on his History of the Norman Conquest (1867-1876), his longest completed book. In common with his works generally, it is distinguished by exhaustiveness of treatment and research, critical ability, a remarkable degree of accuracy, and a certain insight into the past which he gained from his practical experience of men and institutions. He is almost exclusively a political historian. His saying that "history is past politics and politics are present history" is significant of this limitation of his work, which left on one side subjects of the deepest interest in a nation's life. | In dealing with constitutional matters he sometimes attaches too much weight to words and formal aspects. This gives certain of his arguments an air of pedantry, and seems to lead him to find evidences of continuity in institutions which in reality and spirit were different from what they once had been. As a rule his estimates of character are remarkably able. It is true that he is sometimes swayed by prejudice, but this is the common lot of great historians; they cannot altogether avoid sharing in the feelings of the past, for they live in it, and Freeman did so to an extraordinary degree. Yet if he judges too favourably the leaders of the national party in England on the eve of the Norman Conquest, that is a small matter to set against the insight which he exhibits in writing of Aratus, Sulla, Nicias, William the Conqueror, Thomas of Canterbury, Frederick the Second and many more. In width of view, thoroughness of investigation and honesty of purpose he is unsurpassed by any historian. He never conceals nor wilfully misrepresents anything, and he reckoned no labour too great which might help him to draw a truthful picture of the past. When a place had any important connexion with his work he invariably visited it. He travelled much, always to gain knowledge, and generally to complete his historical equipment. His collected articles and essays on places of historical interest are perhaps the most pleasing of his writings, but they deal exclusively with historical associations and architectural features. The quantity of work which he turned out is enormous, for the fifteen large volumes which contain his Norman Conquest, his unfinished History of Sicily, his William Rufus (1882), and his Essays (1872-1879), and the crowd of his smaller books, are matched in amount by his uncollected contributions to periodicals. In respect of matter his historical work is uniformly excellent. In respect of form and style the case is different. Though his sentences themselves are not wordy, he is extremely diffuse in treatment, habitually repeating an idea

in successive sentences of much the same import. While this habit was doubtless aggravated by the amount of his journalistic work, it seems originally to have sprung from what may be called a professorial spirit, which occasionally appears in the tone of his remarks. He was anxious to make sure that his readers would understand his exact meaning, and to guard them against all | possible misconceptions. His lengthy explanations are the more grievous because he insists on the same points in several of his books. His prolixity was increased by his unwillingness, when writing without prescribed limits, to leave out any detail, however unimportant. His passion for details not only swelled his volumes to a portentous size, but was fatal to artistic construction. The length of his books has hindered their usefulness. They were written for the public at large, but few save professed students, who can admire and value his exhaustiveness, will read the many hundreds of pages which he devotes to a short period of history. In some of his smaller books, however, he shows great powers of condensation and arrangement, and writes tersely enough. His style is correct, lucid and virile, but generally nothing more, and his endeavour to use as far as possible only words of Teutonic origin limited his vocabulary and makes his sentences somewhat monotonous. While Froude often strayed away from his authorities, Freeman kept his authorities always before his eyes, and his narrative is here and there little more than a translation of their words. Accordingly, while it has nothing of Froude's carelessness and inaccuracy, it has nothing of his charm of style. Yet now and again he rises to the level of some heroic event, and parts of his chapter on the " Campaign of Hastings" and of his record of the wars of Syracuse and Athens, his reflections on the visit of Basil the Second to the church of the Virgin on the Acropolis, and some other passages. in his books, are fine pieces of eloquent writing.

The high quality of Freeman's work was acknowledged by all competent judges. He was made D.C.L. of Oxford and LL.D. of Cambridge honoris causa, and when he visited the United States on a lecturing tour was warmly received at various places of learning. He served on the royal commission on ecclesiastical courts appointed in 1881. In 1884 he was appointed regius professor of modern history at Oxford. His lectures were thinly attended, for he did not care to adapt them to the requirements of the university examinations, and he was not perhaps well fitted to teach young men. But he exercised a wholesome influence over the more earnest students of history among the resident graduates. From 1886 he was forced by ill-health to spend much of his time abroad, and he died of smallpox at Alicante on the 16th of March 1892, while on a tour in Spain. Freeman had a strongly marked personality. Though impatient in temper and occasionally rude, he was tender-hearted and generous. His rudeness to strangers was partly caused by shyness and partly by a childlike inability to conceal his feelings. Eminently truthful, he could not understand that some verbal insincerities are necessary to social life. He had a peculiar faculty for friendship, and his friends always found him sympathetic and affectionate. In their society he would talk well and showed a keen sense of humour. He considered it his duty to expose careless and ignorant writers, and certainly enjoyed doing so. He worked hard and methodically, often had several pieces of work in hand, and kept a daily record of the time which he devoted to each of them. His tastes were curiously limited. No art interested him except architecture, which he studied throughout his life; and he cared little for literature which was not either historical or political. In later life he ceased to hold the theological opinions of his youth, but remained a devout churchman.

See W. R. W. Stephens, Life and Letters of E. A. Freeman (London, 1895): Frederic Harrison, Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill and other Literary Estimates (London, 1899); James Bryce, "E. A. Freeman," Eng. Hist. Rev., July 1892. (W. Hu.)

FREEMAN, primarily one who is free, as opposed to a slave or serf (see FEUDALISM; SLAVERY). The term is more specifically applied to one who possesses the freedom of a city, borough or company. Before the passing of the Municipal Corporations

Act 1835, each English borough admitted freemen according to | its own peculiar custom and by-laws. The rights and privileges of a freeman, though varying in different boroughs, generally included the right to vote at a parliamentary election of the borough, and exemption from all tolls and dues. The act of 1835 respected existing usages, and every person who was then an admitted freeman remained one, retaining at the same time all his former rights and privileges. The admission of freemen is now regulated by the Municipal Corporations Act 1882. By section 201 of that act the term "freeman " includes any person of the class whose rights and interests were reserved by the act, of 1835 under the name either of freemen or of burgesses. By section 202 no person can be admitted a freeman by gift or by purchase; that is, only birth, servitude or, marriage are qualifications. The Honorary Freedom of Boroughs Act 1885, however, makes an exception, as by that act the council of every borough may from time to time admit persons of distinction to be honorary freemen of the borough. The town clerk of every borough keeps a list, which is called "the freeman's roll," and when any person claims to be admitted a freeman in respect of birth, servitude or marriage, the mayor examines the claim, and if it is established the claimant's name is enrolled by the town clerk.

A person may become a freeman or freewoman of one of the London livery companies by (1) apprenticeship or servitude; (2) patrimony; (3) redemption; (4) gift. This last is purely honorary. The most usual form of acquiring freedom was by serving apprenticeship to a freeman, free both of a company and of the city of London. By an act of common council of 1836 apprenticeship was permitted to freemen of the city who had not taken up the freedom of a company. By an act of common council of 1889 the term of service was reduced from seven years to four years. Freedom by patrimony is always granted to children of a person who has been duly admitted to the freedom. Freedom by redemption or purchase requires the payment of certain entrance fees, which vary with the standing of the company. In the Grocers' Company freedom by redemption does not exist, and in such companies as still have a trade, e.g. the Apothecaries and Stationers, it is limited to members of the trade. See W. C. Hazlitt, The Livery Companies of the City of London (1892).

FREEMASONRY. According to an old "Charge" delivered to initiates, Freemasonry is declared to be an "ancient and honourable institution: ancient no doubt it is, as.having subsisted from time immemorial; and honourable it must be acknowledged to be, as by a natural tendency it conduces to make those so who are obedient to its precepts ... to so high an eminence has its credit been advanced that in every age Monarchs themselves have been promoters of the-art, have not thought it derogatory from their dignity to exchange the sceptre for the trowel, have patronised our mysteries and joined in our Assemblies." For many years the craft has been conducted

without respect to clime, colour, caste or creed.

History. The precise origin of the society has yet to be ascertained, but is not likely to be, as the early records are lost; there is, however, ample evidence remaining to justify the claim for its antiquity and its honourable character. Much has been written as to its eventful past, based upon actual records, but still more which has served only to amuse or repel inquirers, and led not a few to believe that the fraternity has no trustworthy history. An unfavourable opinion of the historians of the craft generally may fairly have been held during the 18th and early in the 19th centuries, but happily since the middle of the latter century quite a different principle has animated those brethren who have sought to make the facts of masonic history known to the brotherhood, as well as worth the study of students in general. The idea that it would require an investigator to be a member of the "mystic tie " in order to qualify as a reader of masonic history has been exploded. The evidences collected concerning the institution during the last five hundred years, or more, may now be examined and tested in the most severe manner by literary and critical experts (whether opposed or

favourable to the body), who cannot fail to accept the claims made as to its great antiquity and continuity, as the lineal descendant of those craftsmen who raised the cathedrals and other great English buildings during the middle ages.

It is only needful to refer to the old works on freemasonry, and to compare them with the accepted histories of the present time, to be assured that such strictures as above are more than justified. The premier work on the subject was published in London in 1723. the Rev. James Anderson being the author of the historical portion, introductory to the first "Book of Constitutions" of the original Grand Lodge of England. Dr Anderson gravely states that "Grand Master Moses often marshalled the Israelites into a regular and Grand Master of the lodge at Jerusalem.... Nebuchadnezzar became general lodge, whilst in the wilderness. King Solomon was the Grand Master Mason," &c., devoting many more pages to similar absurdities, but dismisses the important modern innovation (17161717) of a Grand Lodge with a few lines noteworthy for their brief and indefinite character.

"

In 1738 a second edition was issued, dedicated to the prince of Wales (a Master Mason and master of a lodge "), and was the work of the same brother (as respects the historical part), the additions being mainly on the same lines as the former volume, only, if pos sible, still more ridiculous and extravagant; e.g. Cyrus constituted Jerubbabel provincial grand master in Judah"; Charles Martel was" the Right Worshipful Grand Master of France, and Edward I. being deeply engaged in wars left the craft to the care of several successive grand masters" (duly enumerated). Such loose statements may now pass unheeded, but unfortunately they do not exhaust the objections to Dr Anderson's method of writing history. The excerpt concerning St Alban (apparently made from Coles's Ancient Constitutions, 1728-1729) has the unwarranted additional title of Grand Master conferred on that saint, and the extract concerning King Ethelstan and Prince Edwin from the "Old MS. Charges" (given in the first edition) contains still more unauthorized modern terms, with the year added of 926; thus misleading most seriously those who accept the volume as trustworthy, because written by the accredited historian of the Grand Lodge, Junior Grand Warden in 1723. These examples hardly increase our confidence in the author's accuracy when Dr Anderson comes to treat of the origin of the premier Grand Lodge; but he is our only informant as to that important event, and if his version of the occurrence is declined, we are absolutely without any information.

In considering the early history of Freemasonry, from a purely matter-of-fact standpoint, it will be well to settle as a necessary preliminary what the term did and does now include or mean, and how far back the inquiry should be conducted, as well as on what lines. If the view of the subject herein taken be correct, it will be useless to load the investigation by devoting considerable space to a consideration of the laws and customs of still older societies which may have been utilized and imitated by the fraternity, but which in no sense can be accepted as the actual forbears of the present society of Free and Accepted Masons. They were predecessors, or possibly prototypes, but not near relatives or progenitors of the Freemasons.? The Mother Grand Lodge of the world is that of England, which was inaugurated in the metropolis on St John Baptist's day 1717 by four or more old lodges, three of which still flourish. time, but whether they were invited to the meeting is not now There were other lodges also in London and the country at the known. Probably not, as existing records of the period preserve a sphinx-like silence thereon. Likewise there were many scores of lodges at work in Scotland, and undoubtedly in Ireland the craft was widely patronized. Whatever the ceremonies may have been which were then known as Freemasonry in Great Britain and

Ireland, they were practically alike, and the venerable Old Charges held by them as the title-deeds of their masonic inheritance. or MS. constitutions, dating back several centuries, were rightly

the fraternity quite different in many respects to all preceding It was a bold thing to do, thus to start a governing body for organizations, and to brand as irregular all lodges which declined

1 If history be no ancient Fable

Free Masons came from Tower of Babel.

("The Freemasons; an Hudibrastic poem," London, 1723.) The Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry and Medieval Builders, by Mr G. F. Fort (U.S.A.), and the Cathedral Builders: The Magestri Comacini, by "Leader Scott" (the late Mrs Baxter), take rather a different view on this point and ably present their arguments. The Rev. C. Kingsley in Roman and. Teuton writes of the Comacini, Perhaps the original germ of the great society of Freemasons.'